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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Let me tell you a little story about how one of the most stressful nights of my life somehow led to a new bathroom.

It was about 9:30 at night, I was reading and winding down for the night. Rob's sister, Rachel, who was staying with us, was taking a shower. All of a sudden, I heard this loud high pitched non-stop beeping. The kind that makes your heart race and makes you immediately leap to your feet. I started running around the hallway trying to figure out where the heck it was coming from. Disconnected the smoke detector - no luck. Poor Rachel ended her shower a bit early because of the crazy high-pitched noise coming right outside the door. I finally figured out it was the alarm system that was freak.ing.out. I ran to our alarm keypad and everything looked perfectly normal. So I called our alarm company helpline...and frantically tried to explain what was happening, fully expecting them to just shut 'er down.

Nope.

Miss-not-so-helpful lady on the phone condescendingly (and quite rudely, I might add) walked me through the steps for me to manually shut off the system. It was a disaster. The alarm system was installed before we moved in and we just re-activated it so I didn't know where anything they were referencing was located in our house. It took me 30 minutes to find all the parts and disconnect them. All the while, the terrible alarm that is supposed to scare big bad robbers away is screeching in my ear. My heart was racing the entire time and poor Rachel and I were on a scavenger hunt to make the madness stop.

During our little treasure hunt, we found the reason the alarm system was on the fritz. There was water dripping from the main floor into the basement...and it happened to be dripping onto the exact location where the alarm system battery was located :) And since it's an alarm, designed for security, everything is bolted and screwed shut so not only did I have to find the dang battery, but then free it from captivity and then deactivate it by removing a wet wire from where it was connected. I asked the lady if I would get electrocuted and her reply "I dont know. Why don't you just try?' #nothelpful

Eventually we got the noise to stop, right before Rob arrived home to two panicked, exhausted, annoyed girls. And then Rob and I set about trying to find the source of the leak and shut off the water. Problemo numero dos - Since our house is so old, we can't shut off the water without accessing it through the street, which we need a street key for. What a night!

So we just stopped using all sources of water for the night until our handyman could come check it out the next day. The culprit: the hall bathroom shower. And the solution was looking rather grim - just to replace a couple tiles, it was going to take a couple thousand dollars. What.

Luckily, the story gets better from here! When the tile guy came to give us a more exact estimate, he said that he could replace ALL the tile in the entire bathroom (aka new bathroom!) and fix the leak, all for the same amount that we were originally quoted. We were completely shocked. I mean, nobody likes to unexpectedly run into a pricey problem out of nowhere but if you have to, you want to at least see some progress and changes in the right direction for that kind of money. We got another quote as well from somebody that could do just the leak repair for a couple hundred less, but we decided we would rather pay a little more to get it done the right way and to have a chance to majorly update the bathroom. We also didn't feel comfortable tackling this ourselves since there was a leak involved that would cause us a lot more damage and expenses down the road if we didn't get it fixed professionally.

So to save some money, we decided to demo the bathroom ourselves. And by we, I mean Rob. So yesterday, Rob and Sandy (our basement roomie) tore up all the tile and took out all the fixtures, sink, and toilet to prepare for the tile crew to come today and get started on the renovation.

Check out the before pics and renovation pics as of last night. The whole bathroom is TINY - it's just less than 20 sq feet for the actual floor and less than that in the shower.

More pics to come later this with inspiration, progress, and final project in the next week!

Demo crew

Bye bye toilet and sink...and floor. At this point, Rob hadn't removed the red tile since it was tiled to drywall (a no-no). But this morning he tore that up too.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

This past weekend, we got our first real snow in our new home! It was so beautiful to wake up to - snow is one of my most favorite things in the whole world. Props to my sweet husband for letting me drag him outside 5 minutes after we woke up :)

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Movement: ALL.THE.TIME. Mom asked me the other day when I think that she sleeps and I realized that I really don't know when/if she sleeps :) I feel her moving all throughout the day and night - and I LOVE it. I love knowing she is okay and feeling her being so active makes me so happy. It makes me feel more connected to her.

What I miss: Sleeping on my stomach, still :) And any beverage that is not water.

What I'm loving: I had my first stranger comment the other day about my little one on the way. I was so happy that he felt confident enough to guess that I was pregnant :) I'm also loving planning the nursery - I just can't wait to have our little girl in her little room!

Symptoms: Braxton-Hicks contractions started around 22 weeks! Crazy. Also, I've been having sharp muscle pain in my abdomen which was concerning at first - but I think it just has to do with how much water I've been drinking. I don't seem to get the pain nearly as much when I've hit my goal of at least 64 oz/day. So I'm just trying to drink nonstop and rest when I feel tired. Also still getting leg cramps in the middle of the night, which are super painful in the moment but make me laugh later.

Cravings: Still LOVING potato-y things. Also, once I smell something or get an idea of something yummy in my mind, it is really hard to change my taste bud's mind. Don't like tomato-based things - but do like fresh tomatoes. I've been craving more fruits, veggies, greens lately so I had a homemade smoothie every day (at least one a day) for a week - and then our blender broke haha. So when we get a new one, I plan on continuing that diet :)

Best Moments this week: Cleaning out the nursery room and putting our crib together! We bought it off of Craigs List a couple months back for only $40 and we love it. It's so pretty and made everything so much more real. Also it was exhausting moving rooms around so I'm really glad we did it this early in the pregnancy before I become even more tired & uncomfortable :)

What we are looking forward to: We have a trip to San Francisco planned late March (!!!) and a short stay at the Grove Park Inn in April as a "baby-moon" - cannot wait for these last few vacations before the baby comes!

Notes: I really miss the days of being able to answer "Great!" when someone asks me how I am feeling :) I really have adjusted to feeling sick a lot but I don't want to be dishonest when someone asks me how I'm feeling...but then they feel bad that I'm sick and it just is such an awkward conversation :) I really don't mind feeling sick at all - I know it's worth it and I'm just learning to rest more and pace myself.